


On Julia Waxmen Burnsides

by bramblePatch



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Archived from Bramblepatch Blog, Character Analysis, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 20:46:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16878894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblePatch/pseuds/bramblePatch
Summary: Because it's just as valid to say thatMagnusis a small but important part ofJulia'sstory. Originally posted on my Tumblr November 2017.





	On Julia Waxmen Burnsides

Here’s the thing: give me a Julia Waxmen Burnsides who, while her story touches on and intersects with the Saga of the Seven Birds, was every bit as much a hero of the Raven’s Roost Revolution as her husband, and knows it, and in the afterlife is Not Here for her husband’s friends viewing her as a casualty of their story.

Because yes, if you view the story as Magnus’s, she’s a fleeting if important element of his narrative. But by the same token, he’s a latecomer to her city’s struggle.

One who takes up a leadership role, yes, because Magnus is loud and protective and easy to follow. But just as much, he won the trust of the resistance by virtue of being Julia’s sweetheart, Steven’s favored apprentice, and it’s the Waxmens’ word that carries weight among the craftsmen of Raven’s Roost. This city is the first real home Magnus has known in… he’s not certain, with the odd gaps in his memory he instinctually doesn’t push too hard at. But it’s Julia’s only home. She’s the one who grew up under Kalen’s steadily worsening rule. She’s the one who knows the streets and bridges and rooftops like the back of her hand, who can, if she cares to, travel from one end of the city to the other without ever setting foot on solid stone. She’s the one who babysat the neighbors’ kids and ran errands for the old folks when she was younger, and who has probably fixed or built something in your house.

Julia Waxmen broke hearts all along the Craftsmen’s Corridor when she fell head over heels for the cheerfully bombastic stranger that the mysterious woman in the blue robes brought to study at her father’s workshop.

During the revolution, Julia’s the one with the patience and the knowledge and the connections to plan actions against the Governor’s forces that consist of something more than just rushing in. She can sweet-talk the undecided and she can spot a sabotaged bridge from the safety of the street. Magnus is unquestionably an asset and she’s so glad to have him on her side, at her side, but Magnus is not the whole of the revolution.

And afterward, Magnus was hardly the only one who had advocated for mercy; Magnus was not the only one who believed that there had been enough killing without adding Kalen to the list of the dead.

So really - it doesn’t matter how elaborate of guilt trips the IPRE crew wants to construct for themselves, they don’t get to take credit for a tragedy which was in the works well before they entered this plane, which they likely wouldn’t have even noticed at the time except that one of their own had unwittingly made his home in the middle of it. They saved the world, but the world - every world - is full of stories that are not theirs.


End file.
